The Chameleon's Shadow

In Minette Walters's latest suspense novel, Simon Vance partners with the author to create an amazing oral portrait of a British veteran of the Iraq War, who may or may not be a killer. Lieutenant Charles Acland returns from the war with a damaged face and a deep distrust of everyone. Just as he is making some psychological progress, he is implicated in a beating. Vance manages to create distinct, telling personalities for a huge cast that includes street kids, weary police, and lesbian bar owners. His gradually changing tone for Acland helps us understand the man's moods. And his pacing carries us through the slightly overlong doctor talk into the heart of the suspense. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

November 26, 2007
One look at Lt. Charles Acland’s disfigured face and anyone can see that the Iraqi bomb that blew up two of his men has left him profoundly changed—but have his traumatic brain injuries altered the young British army officer’s personality enough to make him a murderer? That’s the narrative fuse Edgar-winner Walters (The Devil’s Feather)
lights to ignite this sizzling psychological thriller. She skillfully interweaves strands of Acland’s story, including notes from the military psychiatrist treating him, with the hunt for a serial killer who’s claimed at least three victims in South London. Then another man is beaten within an inch of his life not long after Acland’s move into the neighborhood. When the lieutenant gets into a near-fatal bar fight with a Pakistani stockbroker, Acland’s unlikely savior is a 250-pound lesbian weight lifter and doctor named Jackson. Surprisingly, Jackson is also one of the few convincing characters in this plot-propelled tale, a flaw readers may be willing to ignore—until they slam into a contrived denouement well below Walters’s usual standard.

March 31, 2008
Unlike the protagonist of Walters's novel, Vance may not be suffering from a split personality. Still Vance's cabinet of voices—each with its own timbre, character, accent and persona—accurately reflects the multifaceted aspect of Walters's book. Her hero, a wounded British veteran of the war in Iraq who returns home with no recollection of his service, is carefully documented through doctors' accounts and conversations with family members and others. Vance is a gifted enough mimic that one occasionally forgets that all these voices are emerging from the same throat. Some of the nuance—of British class and education, or lack thereof, as coded in the relative width or narrowness of vowels and consonants—may be lost on some American listeners, but it demonstrates Vance's expertise. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26, 2007).